The best of popular science

I have read Scientific American for several years. It's not actually a scientific journal: editors decide the content, and the articles are accessible to the general public. Scientific papers are rigorously scrutinised by professionals with knowledge of the field, and are very different indeed. I'm not criticising Scientific American in this respect, I just want to make clear what the magazine is about. It's not a "proper" scientific journal where the raw results of original research are reviewed, published and criticised (for that, try Nature).

Ultimately, Scientific American is a magazine of interest to Scientific Americans (and this Scientific Brit, among many international readers). It offers insight into the world of science that is still accessible to people who haven't studied the subject of the articles at an advanced level.

Scientific American also has occasional features on technology, sometimes directly related to scientific inquiry (such as new particle accelerators) and sometimes not. There was a recent article on how virtual reality technology might one day be used to integrate computerised information into our lives: "augmented reality" glasses could overlay text or images onto your vision. You'll never have to get lost (arrows tell you where to go) or spend ages shopping (the price of the item you want could be overlaid on your view of the entire street).

Past Scientific American features have dealt with efforts to combat slavery in the modern world (which tried hard to be science by dealing with the psychological issues raised by slavery), and the issue of nuclear weapons in India and Pakistan. I think there is a good balance between science, technology, the environment, and social issues arising from scientific progress (such as the use of genetic information).

The in-depth articles are five or six pages, with about two of these being sidebars and illustrations. The articles are clear enough to understand, but often there is a lot to take in. The reader has to be attentive, but there is enough explanation for me (a physicist) to understand articles about biology and evolution.

Regular columns include "working knowledge" on how things that affect our lives work, from computer assisted braking in cars, to the use of cell cultures in medical labs. In a similar vein, "Ask the Experts" takes questions from readers. "Antigravity", the humour column, is hit and miss but sometimes funny, and only one page.

The accompanying website is well worth looking at before (and after!) you buy. The publishers put the news, regular columns and a couple of articles from each issue on the web, and you can get a feel for the general format of the magazine.

Stimulating Survey of Science from Many Perspectives

While the illuminati have "Science" and "Nature" the rest of us have Scientific American. Scientific American covers similar cutting edge topics as those journals but with less attention to the minutia, more breadth and fewer impenetrable graphs.

Each issue has roughly three sections. The first are letters to the editors, short news stories about recent scientific issues written by staff writers and the always interesting Scientific American 50 and 100 year ago look back at previous "news." If there is a weakness in the magazine its that sometimes the short news stories don't carry the same weigh as the rest of the magazine, they seem to be a bit fluffy, more pop science and sensationalism.

The meat of the magazine are the 3 or 4 main articles each covering a different area of scientific endeavor. From my limited experience it seems that Scientific American does a great job of not only getting some of the best minds on a particular subject but minds !that can write. As Richard Feynman once noted, we don't understand a subject until we can explain it simply, an aim to which Scientific America seems to strive.

The last sections of the magazine is interesting, really two parts both sort of mental diversions. Mathematical Recreations which I never really paid much attention to, strange excursions into mathematics and the Amateur Scientist, interesting experiements that can be performed with a minimum of involvement. There is also a section with book reviews.

Finally, there are sort of editorials at the end. I'm not too big of a fan of the current writers, they seem a bit obfuscated but this section has a history of intriguing thinkers.

I hesitate to give 5 stars only because I believe the publicatione has such a strong history to live up to and I'm not sure it fully compares to what it once was.

good science but often boring and annoyingly political

I hate that this SCIENCE mag is often political and it's not really written for human interest, I prefer DISCOVER.